| "When I first got here,
this school was at the point where we were able
to drink, smoke weed in school and have dice
games," said Shimika Breazeale, 17, now a
senior. "You had people
having sex inside the school, wasn't nobody
caring. You had security guards selling drugs
outside the school, you had kids selling drugs
out of the school."
When Olufemi arrived at
McClymonds in 1994, she saw the same things. So
she set up shop and got to work, employing
techniques that she had been using in several
other Oakland Public Schools during the previous
10 years.
Olufemi's experience as
a crisis mediator began in the 1980s after the
arson charges were dropped and she changed her
life from violence to counseling. That was when
she became a student mediator.
Today, Olufemi trains
young students to be mediators, just as she was
trained years ago.
Each day she holds two
classes, one in the morning and one in the
afternoon. They are structured, but often times
they serve as informal discussions on what is
going on in the students' lives.
Curious students often
drop in, wondering what's going on.
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